


By Any Other Name

by MadameReveuse



Category: The Pacific (TV)
Genre: F/F, Femslash, Post-War, and a surprise twist, fem!Sledge
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-05-25
Updated: 2015-05-25
Packaged: 2018-04-01 05:53:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,184
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4008334
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MadameReveuse/pseuds/MadameReveuse
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Gina Sledge could do anything a boy could do. And yes, that included going to war, dad, thank you very much. But it was forbidden for Eugene Sledge to love Snafu Shelton.</p>
            </blockquote>





	By Any Other Name

**Author's Note:**

> As always, this is solely based on the characters portrayed in "The Pacific", no disrespect to any of the real men is intended.  
> Partial credit for this fic goes to fuzzytrashgiver on tumblr, because when I birthed this AU she was the metaphorical midwife, and let's be honest, at this point fuzzy is in everything I do.

_That which we call a rose_

_By any other name would smell as sweet_

_\- William Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet_

 

Gina Sledge could do anything a boy could do. And yes, that included going to war, dad, thank you very much.

She was not exactly what you’d call _girly_. Young men called her dark red hair “fiery” and “pretty” because it was common knowledge that redhead girls were attractive. She rarely ever got compliments on her face: her straight lips, straight nose, her solemn brown eyes. She looked like the kind of young woman who thinks too much. She _was_ the kind of young woman who thinks too much. At least that’s what her mother said, her voice doting, but also warning.

Her mother thought she was in love with Sidney Phillips, that they would make a beautiful couple one day and give her grandchildren. When Gina wanted to enlist with the marines, her mother thought it was to follow Sidney, which she found romantic, but still disapproved of.

Sid understood. Sid called her Gene, not Gina, not Geney, not Ginny. Sid called her Gene and saw a best friend when he looked at her, a person just as valuable, just as capable as him or his male friends. Someone you listened to, someone you took seriously, not the sickly little girl with pigtails and a heart condition she had been when they had met in elementary school. When Sid cuffed her shoulder and said “Gene, I wish we were going together” he _meant_ it.

Sid believed in her. Sid believed that if she were allowed to, she would be fully capable of going to war and making it back. Just like any man. That was what gave her the resolve to actually try it.

Gina was her father’s jewel, and not long after Sid had shipped out, he caved in. He showed her how to cut her hair and bind her chest right to look like a young man. He knew people who could make Gina Eugene on her ID and get her enlisted. At last he sent her off with his own sidearm and the mutual promise to send letters whenever they could.

* * *

 

And off she went to training, and then to the godforsaken islands of the South Pacific, where many things happened. Among them, Snafu.

Snafu was a man the likes of which she’d never met before. Her mother would certainly not approve of her hanging around him, would regard his rude, filthy self with only lightly hidden disdain and tell him to use the servant entrance when setting foot on the premises. But in the South Pacific, among the mud and blood and corpses, they were all the same. They were all marines. Snafu was, in his very own way, a damn good marine. Otherwise he wouldn’t have survived all he had. And Snafu cared. Not about her wealthy father, like the boys at home. Not about taming her. Not even about “her”. Snafu didn’t see “her”, didn’t see Gina. He just knew Sledgehammer, a fellow soldier, and still somehow he cared, first reluctantly, later with an intensity that bordered on scary. Sometimes, Gene looked at Snafu and couldn’t help thinking: _this man wants me, and he has no idea how to handle it._ But these thoughts were quickly abandoned, because even if Gene had come to trust Snafu with her life, she wouldn’t trust him with her secret just yet. So there was no way. Gina Sledge could do everything a man could do. But it was forbidden for Eugene Sledge to love Snafu Shelton.

* * *

 

 

On the train home she revealed herself, in a rare quiet moment at night, when her and Snafu were the only ones awake.

“Hey, Snaf?”

Snafu made a humming noise, confirming he was up and something resembling listening. For once, he wasn’t smoking, his fingers drawing idle patterns on the table between them. They were to reach New Orleans soon, and his thoughts were probably already home.

“I wanted you to know something, before we…go our separate ways.”

“Yeah?”

“This might sound strange now. Shocking, even. But…it’s the truth.”

“Go ‘head an’ spill, Eugene” Snafu said, faint amusement in it, as if not quite believing that anything could shock him anymore.

“Yeah… _Eugene_ is wrong. That’s…my real name is Gina, actually. I’m…a girl.”

She watched as Snafu’s eyebrows rose very slowly. “You’re ah what, Sledgehamma? You gone Asiatic now or…?”

“No. Or if I did, then really, it was long before the war. Look, I was a spoilt rich brat and I had some stupid shit to prove. I needed to show them I could go to war and make it back, just like the men do. I enlisted as Eugene because women don’t get to be in the field. I can prove it, if you will. Go to the back of the train with you and show you my caboose, hah.”

Snafu narrowed his eyes, not picking up the joke. “Why you tellin’ me this now?”

“Because…I need to tell someone. Need to tell you? Would feel like betraying, if I didn’t. Listen, Snaf, we could…you know.” Her exhaustion coupled with the fact that they would part ways very soon was making her bold. Words kept tumbling out of her mouth, words she couldn’t quite believe she was saying: “I mean we both know we were…something, right? And that’s okay now…it’s all okay now. If we wanted, we could just…go away together, start over. Wouldn’t have to worry about it being sin. Or anything. Wouldn’t have to worry about nothing. Think about it, you could come with me to Alabama. Or I could go with you. Or if you think that’s too much at once, we can exchange addresses and just…write. For a while. Whatever happens, I don’t…I don’t want to lose sight of you.”

Snafu cleared his throat. “Would be neat if that happened” he said.

“So…will you write?” She had a scrap of paper and a pencil, scribbled her address and slid it over the table. Snafu grinned; she couldn’t really tell if it was sincere or sarcastic.

“Every day of every week” he said, mocking.

“You’re so full of it.”

Snafu shrugged. “Maybe? Get yourself some sleep now, Sledgehamma. Piss dark out there.”

Gina yawned, but protested: “I wanna be awake when you leave. You gonna wake me up, yeah?”

“Sure will” Snafu promised and, lightning quick, he pecked a light, dry-lipped kiss on her temple. She hid a giggle behind her hand, feeling like Gina, not like Sledgehammer, for the first time in years. She drifted off to sleep trying to hold on to that warm, fuzzy feeling. It felt like everything was gonna be okay after all.

* * *

 

“Shit” Snafu whispered, lit a cigarette. Needed one anyway, and badly.

It was clear as daylight what Sledge wanted. Her awkward “We could…you know” was supposed to end in something, something like “be a couple”, “be husband and wife one day.” What she hadn’t known was that wasn’t gonna work out. Her neat little equation didn’t add up at all, because the “husband” component was completely absent, because Snafu had never been no guy. Should have noticed Eugene – no, Gina – was the same as her, somehow.

Snafu had been born Merrielle Shelton (Mary-Elle, the syllables polished smooth by Louisianan accents. It had been the name of a great-aunt she had never met). Cropping the name to Merriell had been the easiest thing out there, just make a smudge on her ID right over the E that was too much. When she had cut her hair, bound her chest, stuffed a pair of socks down the front of her pants and enlisted, she hadn’t expected _finding love_. As time passed by she had forgotten for weeks on end that there was something at all that set her apart from other marines; acting like Snafu had the biggest dick in town had become so ingrained in her being, she forgot she didn’t have no dick at all, or that it mattered. But she’d always known she’d been the only one. Apparently what she’d always known was wrong.

Shit, she didn’t care, she loved Sledgehammer, fiercely. As a fella, as a girl, did it matter shit? It hadn’t to her, ever. Back home – the home she was soon to reach – she had worn pretty dresses and taken men home, had also worn her father’s shirts and taken the occasional girl home, though these encounters usually ended pretty quickly when the girl in question noticed what was what. (Sometimes, though, the girls would stay pliant, stay eager and curious, and at the end of the day, did it matter if it was a cock or two fingers fucking into them? At least the latter came without risk of pregnancy.)

N’awlins wasn’t called the Big Easy for nothing. People let things that weren’t their business slide. A girl could experiment, and this particular girl had found that other girls were just as warm as men and it was all the same. She would have taken care of Sledge, in whatever form he – she – came. But.

It wasn’t just that she was too fucked up, too poor, too Cajun to follow Sledge to his – fuck, her – posh Alabaman neighborhood. Sledge was a god-fearing man – woman, get the hang of it already – and she’d never accept Snafu as a girl. Well, maybe _accept_ was the wrong word, of course she’d _accept_ it, hadn’t she done the exact same thing? But her plans of them getting together ended here. Because it would be sin – she’d heard that word fall from Gina’s mouth minutes ago. It had been in the context of them both being men, but…this was that. Living in sin.

And maybe, maybe Sledge would even try, for her. Would not be appalled, would in fact want her back. But…it meant going against everything she believed in, it meant _living in sin_. Snafu wasn’t one for religion, had never been, but god and her bible had kept Gina safe and sane throughout the war, and who was Merrielle to take that away from her? It would do nothing for Sledge, just fuck her up further. Protecting Sledge had become instinct, had become fused to her bones, if they opened up her heart they’d find that in it. If she herself was what Sledge needed protection against, then so fucking be it.

* * *

 

So when the train came to a stop in New Orleans, she stole away, quietly, going against her promises to wake Sledge or leave an address. As soon as she had stepped out on the platform, she took the scrap of paper that held Sledge’s address and tossed it into the wind. That part of their lives was truly over.

She lit a cigarette and let her feet carry her home. It astonished her a bit how, after coming out of this war so fundamentally changed, she still perfectly recalled the way home. When her cigarette ran out, she lit a new one on the dying remains. She smoked through her whole pack like this, and ground out the last one in the driveway of a tiny, crumbling house hidden somewhere in the bayou. The outskirts of New Orleans were remarkable that way: you just passed through some dodgy alleys, out a little gate and suddenly you were surrounded by swamp. There was a big, fat frog sitting in the driveway. She mimed aiming a rifle at it, pulled the pretend trigger and imagined the frog going up in a tiny cloud of red, intestines splattering everywhere. She had a good giggle about it until she realized these thoughts were way screwed.

“What the hell” she muttered to herself. She already longed for another cigarette. “War’s over” she told herself. “Time to go to sleep, _Snafu_.”

It was just about dawning, but noises already emerged from the house, indicating activity. Sure, she was already up at dawn, always up at dawn, why would her oldest daughter's absence have changed that? If anything, it had given her more work to do.

She knocked on the door once-twice-thrice and waited. _“Dans une minute!”_ a voice called out from within, and despite all, it made her mouth quirk up a little. Then the door opened and for a second, two women just stared at each other. Then, the older one whispered: “Merrielle?”

And Snafu nodded. _“Maman”_ she said. Not a word she had expected to ever say again (not having taken herself for one of those marines who cry out for their mothers in their dying moments). Wrapping her arms around her mother while she cried into her shoulder was a movement she had to relearn, and her head was swimming a little, brain useless and empty and absolutely not coping with the fact that she was _home_ , suddenly surrounded by these painfully familiar sights and sounds and smells again after all these horrible years.

About this time, Gina Sledge woke up on the train alone.

 


End file.
